Environmental Impact Assessment

Abstract

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is defined by Munn [2] as the need to identify and predict the impact on the environment and on man’s health and well-being of legislative proposals, policies, programs, projects, and operational procedures, and to interpret and communicate information about the impact. EIA is thus a process, a systematic process that examines the environmental consequence of development actions in advance [3, p. 4]. Glasson et al. [3] have defined the purpose of EIA as an aid to decision making, an aid to the formulation of the development actions, and an instrument to sustainable development . In order to achieve these goals, EIA requires monitoring data that can be used to identify and predict impacts, and also to evaluate the impacts of a given project once approved. Whereas EIA has been traditionally restricted to projects that are deemed to have significant impacts on the environment, it has recently expanded to include strategic environmental assessment (SEA) discussed in Sect. 33.4 and sustainability assessment (SA) presented in Sect. 33.5.

Distances and locations are the important determinants of many choices that economists study. Economists often rely on information about these variables that are self-reported by respondents in surveys, although information can sometimes be obtained from secondary sources. Self-reports are typically used for information on distances from households or community centers to roads, markets, schools, clinics, and other public services. There is growing evidence that self-reported distances are measured with errors and that these errors are correlated with the outcomes of interest. In contrast to self-reports, global positioning systems (GPS) can determine locations to within 15 m in most cases. The falling cost of GNSS receivers makes it increasingly feasible for field surveys to use GNSS to more accurately measure locations and distances.

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